Lockheed said Wednesday that it will launch production of a new airborne early warning aircraft program on a $19.7-million contract issued to the company by the U.S. Customs Service. The new aircraft, which is a derivative of the Navy P-3 Orion anti-submarine patrol aircraft, features a long-range radar system with an antenna mounted in a 24-foot rotodome atop the fuselage, similar to the well-known Boeing E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) planes.

An immigration inspector was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to smuggle 1,033 pounds of cocaine into the United States, authorities said Friday. Clark Anthony Miller, 42, was arrested by Customs Service agents at his home in Calexico, where he worked as an inspector at the U.S.-Mexico border crossing. Miller pleaded innocent at his arraignment Thursday.

A new federal program designed to crack down on drug smugglers includes a proposal to send Customs Service helicopters across the border to ferry Mexican police as they battle drug traffickers. The program, Operation Hard Line, also calls for the addition of 40 to 80 Customs special agents on the Mexican border as well as computers, X-ray machines and video cameras to assist inspectors and agents, according to a Customs Service outline obtained by the Associated Press.

Cuban President Fidel Castro has asked for talks with the United States to help combat drug smuggling, but the State Department said Wednesday it is too early to assess the overture. In a speech broadcast Tuesday on Cuban television, Castro said: "We have to arrange a form of communication between the United States and Cuba in this common battle. The United States knows that they (the drug smugglers) simply laugh when ordered to land. We really have to discuss how to manage such things."

The four men convicted of participating in a drug smuggling ring with former Los Angeles Rams defensive back Darryl Henley may be entitled to a new trial, a federal appeals court said Wednesday. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a lower court to review whether the four men's convictions, including that of Henley's uncle, Rex, were the result of a prejudiced jury after the football player attempted to bribe at least one juror with $50,000. The appeals court is following U.S.

The hymn "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" drifts through the open windows of a wooden church perched above a turquoise bay. It is a scene that could have played out a century ago on this Caribbean island. First settled by Puritans in 1630, then used as an outpost by pirates and now inhabited mostly by descendants of slaves who speak English as their first language, Old Providence seems forgotten by time.

Manuel A. Noriega, imprisoned in Miami awaiting trial on cocaine-smuggling charges, saw his legal troubles deepen Friday when his co-defendant in another drug case pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against him. Enrique (Kiki) Pretelt, a Panamanian businessman, entered a two-count felony plea in federal court in Tampa. Pretelt said that he had conspired with Noriega in 1983 and 1984 to smuggle 1.

The most tangible legacy of Father Lorenzo Zorza's two decades as a missionary is a small patch of concrete near the Consolata Society mission in Somerset, N.J. On this site, the Consolata fathers had weekly sales of used clothes and furniture to benefit their African missions. Lorenzo's task: to supervise the lay people who ran the rummage sale.

"The kings of cocaine," prosecutor Christopher Clark called them. "Willie and Sal. Los Muchachos. The Boys." In the 1980s, when it seemed like much of South Florida was caught in the Miami Vice-like grip of drug smuggling and Colombian cocaine cowboys staged bloody shopping center shootouts in suburbia, no one rode higher in the saddle, federal agents said, than Willie Falcon and Sal Magluta.

U.S. District Court judges here, burdened with the nation's highest federal caseload, have declared a "judicial emergency" after Congress rejected their plea to include money for more judges in a spending bill sent to President Clinton. Chief Judge Marilyn L. Huff said Tuesday that she and seven colleagues are searching for ways to streamline handling of civil and criminal cases to prevent the courts from becoming paralyzed or cases from being summarily dismissed.